Last weekend, Jay Leno made some asinine comments about CBS firing Stephen Colbert and ending The Late Show. Leno’s perspective was (in so many words) that Colbert made too many jokes about Republicans and corporate types (who are also Republicans), and Colbert was probably fired because he didn’t do both-sides jokes. It was ridiculous, especially given that we know that the Late Show’s cancellation was almost entirely about Paramount/CBS’s capitulation to the Trump administration to get their merger with Skydance through the FCC. Well, Samantha Bee is no Leno, but she has some interesting thoughts on everything that went into CBS’s decision. Bee argues that it really was a financial decision for CBS, because all late night shows are losing their audiences and a lot of money.
Samantha Bee made an appearance on the Breaking Bread with Tom Papa podcast where she gave her take on Colbert’s show getting cancelled. Papa noted that the show was losing $40 million a year and that the show’s “parent company is trying to curry favor with the president” over the merger.
“I think both things are true,” Bee said. “It definitely was hemorrhaging money. These legacy shows are hemorrhaging money with no real end to that — in sight, people are just not tuning in….People are literally on their phones all the time for one thing, so they actually don’t necessarily need a recap of the day’s events. They’re very well-versed in what has happened.”
Bee said that viewers are now more interested in watching “people just absolutely murder each other in a South Korean game show” or “watching people fall off cliffs to relax at night before nodding off,” in addition to changing viewing habits.
“It is also true that when the president of the United States has to give his sign off on a corporate merger, the thing you can’t do is make jokes about him. He’s a thin-skinned idiot and we know he’s like a pernicious cancer and he cares about that stuff,” she added. Bee recalled that during the time she hosted Full Frontal, there were several mergers, and “it was a constant source of conversation,” about not causing any trouble amid the multi-billion dollar transactions.
“It’s so much easier for them to cut it loose with this merger coming down the pike,” she said. “It makes the decision such a no-brainer, and probably the most agonizing decisions they were having were about how do we float this? How do we not get a lot of blowback? I’m sure they knew it was happening a long time ago.”
Bee said that the decision to end The Late Show was “awful” as she knows a lot of the people that work there, adding, “I love Stephen. I consider him to be a friend. I think he’s amazing. I’m shocked, not surprised.”
This is such an interesting perspective and it really changed the way I thought about what happened to Colbert. She’s absolutely right – it was both a financial decision AND it was about the merger needing the approval of the Trump administration. When the news came out about The Late Show’s cancellation, I read some stuff about how Colbert was credited with rescuing the sinking late-night ship, and how he brought in a younger demographic, and he was #1 for a while. But it’s more than possible that he was only #1 because of the overall decline in “legacy” late-night shows, shows for an audience which simply isn’t there. I’m sort of amazed at the numbers though – how in the world is The Late Show “hemorrhaging” money? While I know these aren’t the cheapest shows to produce, they’re also far from the most expensive, right? Has the bottom dropped out of commercial ad buys?
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, The Late Show screengrabs.
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- New York Premiere Of Apple TV`s `Gutsy` Featuring: Samantha Bee Where: New York, New York, United States When: 08 Sep 2022 Credit: JOHN NACION/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images
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- Arrivals for The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research Gala: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cure Parkinson, at Cipriani South Street at Casa Cipriani Featuring: Samantha Bee Where: New York, New York, United States When: 29 Oct 2022 Credit: Adam Nemser/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images
I still call BS.
I agree. It’s almost always about the 💰💰💰. Yep
According to Ad Week, ad revenue has dropped 50% in the past 6 years and viewership has dropped almost that much. There’s no need to watch the shows when all the good clips end up on line the next day. What they don’t say is that it’s not just Paramount that doesn’t want to piss off Trump, it’s advertisers, too. Which is probably why Fallon attracts more advertising dollars than Colbert, even though his ratings are not as good. But all of that is relative.
I also think both things are true. The orange blob was certainly the impetus, but I have little doubt that all the network money folks have been looking at the late night shows for a while.
They have. Seth Meyers (?) had to drop his band and I think it was Kimmel who went to four nights a week.
But the fact that Colbert was abruptly dropped without being given similar opportunities to economize kinda proves that it wasn’t really about saving money, no?
I learned a lot from watching the most recent season of Hacks, LOL. They talked a lot about the current state of late night. It seems like Samantha is spot-on … no one tunes into late-night talk shows anymore; the era of winding down in the evening with a monologuing white dude is quickly coming to a close. Fewer people are watching shows when they air on television; instead they’re on their phones so nowadays it’s all about generating clicks via clips from the show that go viral, like Carpool Karaoke or any time Jimmy Fallon has Ariana Grande perform like his court jester.
I don’t watch any late night shows for a lot of the reasons mentioned but I think it comes down to this about Colbert, Stewart, etc. – I’m not in any kind of headspace to see satirical/funny takes on the state of the world right now. What I’d really like is something like old school Bill Maher where people are discussing and encouraging conversation and deeper thoughts about what’s going on. I think Samantha Bee was maybe the closest to that.
Maher still has that with his guests though he himself can be enraging. I still tune in because I get exposed to people of all types that I normally wouldn’t. It gets me out of the bubble and gives me perspective. If I’d just watched msnbc or the regular late night I would’ve thought Kamala would cruise to victory. It’s not always about agreeing with the other side but seeing where they’re at. Basically intel gathering. It was on Maher that a guest first explained the damage to Kamala those anti trans ads aired during nfl games were having. I’d rolled my eyes at how transparent they were prior. And it turns out the guest was right, they really hurt. I’d been lulling myself into a false sense of complacency that he was so awful people would see that and vote for her even if they had issues with the economy or immigration etc.
People ignore the online side of the late night shows. Conan’s late night show at TBS had the worst ratings compared to other shows at mainstream channels. However, they had huge online following especially at youtube. Conan’s channel was one of the best at regularly uploading clips from the show and doing numbers. Conan said before those numbers made the channel happy. If you check out Colbert’s channel, it is the same. They do huge numbers even for longer videos. These shows are also used for promotion of movies, music. Even if the show itself was losing money, it would be making money by promoting Paramount’s investments. There is no way they would cancel the show if there was no merger.
The revenue stream generated by the online world is a trickle compared to even the declining ad rates for network TV. Online can’t support the overhead that a major TV production requires.
Colbert’s show has more overhead than most. In addition to the band, writers and crew, The Late Show also has to operate a 97-year-old theater which I’m sure is no cheap endeavor. And that building doesn’t generate revenue since show tickets are given away via a lottery. Additionally, I don’t think there’s a lot of staff crossover with other CBS shows the way the Tonight Show, Late Night and SNL share staff and producers at NBC.
And Rockefeller center itself is a tourist site where you can get tours of the soundstages for SNL. Etc and there’s advertising and gifts in the shop focused around their shows. Very synergistic.